Noisy Signals: Understanding the Impact of Auditory Distraction on Web Search Tasks

Harvey, Morgan and Pointon, Matthew (2018) Noisy Signals: Understanding the Impact of Auditory Distraction on Web Search Tasks. In: ACM SIGIR Conference on Human Information Interaction and Retrieval 2018, 11-15 March 2018, New Brunswick.

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Abstract

More than half of all searches are now submitted on mobile devices, which can (and often are) used in various potentially distracting situations, such as travelling on a noisy train or when walking down a busy street. Research suggests that walking has negative effects on search performance and behaviour and that auditory distractions can impact on user input and affect perception of task duration.

In this work we conduct a user study (n=16) using a simulated distracting condition to investigate how auditory distractions change perceived and objective search performance and behaviour. Our results suggest that noisy environments induce stress on users, causing them to feel additional perceived time pressure, leading to a reduced ability to identify task-relevant documents and a compulsion to finish the search task quickly.

Item Type: Conference or Workshop Item (Paper)
Uncontrolled Keywords: Mobile search, distraction, search experience, cognition, user study, experimentation
Subjects: G900 Others in Mathematical and Computing Sciences
P900 Others in Mass Communications and Documentation
Department: Faculties > Engineering and Environment > Computer and Information Sciences
Depositing User: Becky Skoyles
Date Deposited: 08 Feb 2018 08:57
Last Modified: 01 Aug 2021 08:37
URI: http://nrl.northumbria.ac.uk/id/eprint/33291

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